Functional Home Storage Pieces that Don’t Sacrifice Aesthetics

When Will and I were living in the city, we didn’t care about the furniture we had, most things were hand-me-downs and what wasn’t, were cheap pieces from Ikea to get us through until we had our own home. Two things that infuriated me about our old living situation was a solution for cords and cozy living room blankets. The cords from our mounted TV just hung down and littered our floor, while the blankets littered our couch. It was less than ideal, but I didn’t care enough to make the change for a home we knew we’d be out of soon.

Four years later and we’re finally out of that home and I held myself to find solutions for those two problems. I expressed the cord concern to our builder at our options meeting and he had mentioned a “smurf tube,” I had no idea what this was, but trusted him. It basically creates a tube through the wall that will start from behind your mounted TV and go through to a space on the wall where you wouldn’t mind having a cable box. I am by no means an expert on this, so I’m not going to try and find a brand to link, but just google it and you’ll find all you need to know.

I am more than thrilled with how this came out, taking care of the cords coming from the TV. However, the cable box was still a problem. No one wants to see a cable box. I can’t understand how this still is a thing and we can’t just operate everything from the television, but that’s out of my swim lane. So instead, I found a storage bench to sit over top of the cable box that way we can still access the box, BUT the bench is actually functional. And do you want to know what I’m storing in that bench? BLANKETS!!! Hello, can we talk about how I killed two birds with one stone here?!

If you look close enough, you can see the cable box under the bench, but otherwise every cord and television necessity is out of sight.

This bench holds 4-5 blankets, which is perfect for when we have company over or just for me during this crazy cold weather that won’t go away. I went ahead and found several other storage benches that provide serious functionality and add aesthetic to your home. All of these pieces are available at Gardiner Wolf Furniture – and don’t forget use code EXCITED50 to save $50 on your purchase of $499 or more!